Gunner burst out with nervous laughter, rubbing his stomach when it twisted in a cramp. “Seriously?”
“I actually know them. Well, not personally,” Caspian said and showed Gunner his phone, which featured a photograph of a very naked Roach holding the other guy in his lap.
“Jesus fucking Christ! What the hell?” Gunner flinched so violently he hit his head on the window. “Where did you get that?”
“They do amateur porn together. Been watching them for a while,” Caspian said with a shrug and stuffed the phone back into his pocket. “So yeah, your old friend is very gay and doesn’t hide it.”
Gunner’s head boiled in confusion, as if it didn’t have the capacity to process all this, but Caspian remained chill and unbuckled his seatbelt. The two men stepped farther away from the building when several cars arrived, full of people dressed with way more elegance than a night out at a shabby bar warranted.
“Let’s talk to them,” he said and stole a kiss off Gunner’s parted lips.
That did trigger him into motion. “Okay, okay,” he said and jumped out of the car to the dull sound of Metallica playing inside the venue, even though he’d rather kiss a rat’s balls than face Roach and his… paramour..
He was intent on dealing with this as fast as humanly possible, so they could move on from the silly notion that Mad Madge hadn’t just imagined her story, but as he took a step closer toward the loud music and the couple hugging in the faint glow of the neon, Caspian’s heavy arm dropped to his shoulders, and the agitation Gunner had felt moments ago turned into something else. He was wary of showing this side of himself to a former friend of his father’s, but if Roach not only was gay but even did porn, what was there to worry about?
His heart pounded when the long-haired guy spotted them over Roach’s shoulder.
“You here for the bachelor party?” the musician asked in a deep, southern drawl. “I’ll be playing in half an hour.”
Roach looked back, and his widening eyes had Gunner’s stomach plummeting as if it was being filled with lead. Of course he’d have recognized a friend’s kid, even after so many years.
“Roach, right?” Caspian asked with a friendly wave. “We’ve got an inquiry.”
“It’s Reed, actually,” Roach said, squaring his shoulders as he turned to face them, and there was no mistaking his inquisitive gaze for anything but danger assessment. He focused on Caspian for a moment too long but pointed to his partner. “And this is Zane.”
After coming to the conclusion that Alex had purposefully tried to make him into a caricature, Gunner was still looking for fashions to suit him. He’d kept the gray jeans on the tighter side, and stuck with the lilac sneakers, but went with a looser fit of clothes that many cute young guys favored. Due to his size, he’d begrudgingly bought the short black leather jacket in the women’s section. This style felt more like him than the sweet print tops he’d gotten before.
Caspian grinned and squeezed Zane’s hand before doing the same with Roach. “Right, sorry. It’s been a long time, and I forgot,” he said, petting Gunner’s shoulder.
Despite Roach still holding his lover, Gunner had a hard time shedding the sense of discomfort over being embraced in public. He used to look up to the bikers from his father’s club. They’d been rowdy, aggressive, and made their money in ways outsiders shouldn’t ask about, but they had been the masculine ideals of Gunner’s youth, and facing one of them with a man on his arm made shame creep up his back like a parasite.
Roach had changed. In fact, he looked better. His short hair was shinier, and the shallow wrinkles he’d had even as a young man were now barely visible.
“What do you want?” Zane asked, shifting to face them alongside Roach. He wore a leather jacket and thick, dark locks of hair cascaded down his chest in messy waves. Gunner could see what attracted Roach—Reed—to this guy.
“So we… um… This might be a strange question,” Gunner said, but his brain was fizzling and all he could think of was that he had a man’s hand on his shoulder in public, wordlessly professing that he was taken.
“You want to get into porn too? All you need is a smartphone,” Zane said with a wave of his hand and embraced Roach, squeezing his hip.
Gunner’s face must have gone the shade of a ripe tomato. No. No no no! The filthy things he did with Caspian were for them only, and he’d never share them with strangers. “No! Nothing like that!”
Roach groaned and took a long drag of smoke, focusing on Caspian with a grim expression. “We don’t do guest appearances either.”
Caspian smiled. He not only used different words than Gunner but his body language had changed. Politer than his exterior suggested, he confused the hell out of people. And while it seemed to reassure many strangers who’d normally act anxious around Gunner, Roach went stiffer with every passing second, as if he sensed a bullseye on his forehead and didn’t know where the snipers were.